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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237672">The Rough Equivalent</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLullabies/pseuds/MsLullabies'>MsLullabies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Flirting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Beta Read, Other, Post-Episode: s03e19 Double Agent Droid, Pre-Relationship, brief discussion of droid sentience/personhood, episode coda, overuse of ellipses, overuse of en dashes, robot intimacy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:46:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLullabies/pseuds/MsLullabies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If Chopper wanted them to return to established protocols, he would need provide AP-5 with some kind of reassurance.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>AP-5/C1-10P | Chopper, C1-10P | Chopper &amp; Hera Syndulla</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Rough Equivalent</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>- I did not tag this non-con because nothing in here meets any of the conventional definitions, but there is discussion of reprogramming Chopper being a violation of his personhood, and of other characters taking that lightly.<br/>- I know almost nothing about computers, and therefore probably can't sci-fi well about droids, and you would think that I would therefore refrain from writing a fic that prominently describes the interior workings of droids, but you underestimate my hubris. If you know about computers or have strong opinions about how droids work in Star Wars, maybe don't read this.<br/>- Despite how hard I ship this pairing, I am not actually a robotfucker, so if there are any conventions of robot romance that I ignored or included or excluded or interacted with in any way, please know that that interaction is completely unintentional on my part, and is in no way intended to be a statement of any kind.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Upon their return to base, AP-5 went straight to the southeastern block and started planning a reorganization of the storage containers there. Chopper followed him at a distance, suspicious. He was sure AP-5 was avoiding him. He had avoided Chopper the whole way back to base, insisting that he had a mission report to write, and could not stay with Chopper while the <i>Ghost's</i> computer scanned him for any surprises the Imperials might have left behind. It had been a transparent excuse, but not quite as pathetic as rearranging storage containers.</p><p>So when AP-5 finished assessing the heavy munitions and went to move on to the blaster packs, Chopper darted out from behind the containers, swerved in front of him, and ran his tread over the foot of AP-5's ambulatory strut as he passed. </p><p>&lt;&lt; Oh I'm sorry, excuse me! &gt;&gt; he said sarcastically, and continued forward at a velocity he knew AP-5 could match. </p><p>But then... </p><p>He didn't hear the quiet metallic sounds of AP-5's footsteps behind him. And he didn't hear his exasperated voice maligning Chopper's spacial calculations.</p><p>Chopper stopped, and rotated his head assembly 173 degrees until he could see AP-5, standing completely still, exactly where he had been when Chopper had run over his foot.</p><p>RA-7 units had no moving parts on their faces, and apart from the lights in their speakers, virtually no features or tools that they could use to create a facial expression, but Chopper knew when someone was glaring at him. He had cultivated an expertise in being glared at. </p><p>"Unlike the oblivious organics, I did not enjoy your behavior while you were being <i>driven</i> by those Imperials, and I'll thank you not to make jokes about it," AP-5 said crisply, and turned back to the crates of munitions. </p><p>Chopper rotated his chassis until his was fully facing AP-5. This was more than avoidance, this was a stark deviation from their usual routine - that routine being deliberate annoyance, indignant pursuit, and then collaborative mischief. (<i>"Head in the game, Chop, you can flirt when you're off duty!"</i> The audio file of Hera's admonishment queued up without playing, a memory Chopper had associated with various processes he used to draw AP-5's attention, not just the specific one that had prompted the admonishment. He liked that memory.) </p><p>By contrast, he did not have any memories from when he had been "driven" by the Imperials, as AP-5 had so baldly put it - his recording and retention had all been rerouted to the Imperial surveillance ship, and then the ship had been destroyed. All Chopper remembered was bickering with AP-5 on the mission, plugging in to the Imperial terminal… and then he had been back on the <i>Ghost</i>, and Hera had been <i>angry.</i> Not at Chopper, but on Chopper's behalf, and that always felt good - like a jet of cool air on an overheated processor, or a fresh oil filter replacing one long past its functionality. He was Hera's droid, and everything was good. </p><p>But presumably, AP-5 did have memories from that time. And now he was deviating from their routine. </p><p>&lt;&lt; Hey, &gt;&gt; Chopper said, and rolled forward, until he bumped into AP-5's legs and made the taller droid stagger slightly. &lt;&lt; What the hell does that mean? What happened? &gt;&gt;</p><p>AP-5 looked down at him. "The rest of the crew did not tell you?" </p><p>Chopper made a non-linguistic sound of dismissal. </p><p>&lt;&lt; They keep making jokes about Imperial upgrades. Useless. All Hera said was that they did more than spy... &gt;&gt; He trailed off as a feeling that did not often rise from his personality core made him pause - he scanned his databanks for the word for it. It couldn't possibly be fear. Apprehension, maybe, at the hundreds of possibilities that he had just calculated to be contained in the phrase "more than spy."</p><p>He tilted his chassis back on his struts so that he could look up at AP-5. </p><p>&lt;&lt; Did I hurt you? &gt;&gt; he asked. It seemed like the most pressing of the various possibilities, although Chopper wasn't sure why. &lt;&lt; You said I tried to scrap you, did I - &gt;&gt; </p><p>"No." AP-5 tilted his head, considering. "Well, you did attack me and force me off the <i>Ghost</i> and I nearly spent a peaceful eternity drifting in space," he said wistfully, and Chopper wheeled back, startled by every part of that, "but that is not what I was referring to." </p><p>He paused, and he seemed uncomfortable. Chopper extended his grasping arms and waved them impatiently. </p><p>&lt;&lt; Then what?? &gt;&gt; He couldn't imagine what could be more upsetting to AP-5 than an attempted assassination by spacing. </p><p>"They made you... <i>docile</i>," AP-5 said at last, and he all but spat the word. "It was unnerving. I did not like it." </p><p>Chopper’s thoughts went momentarily still, and he rolled closer again. Docile. He knew the way Imperials liked their droids to behave. No wonder AP-5 was deviating from established protocols. </p><p>"I kept trying to tell that organic that something wasn't right, that you weren't yourself. He did not believe me. He was just glad that you were more <i>agreeable</i>." AP-5's voice was dripping with disgust. </p><p>Chopper huffed, all those jokes about Imperial “improvements” taking on a new cast. So his crew liked it when Chopper was sliced and hijacked, did they. He would have to address that. </p><p>But right now, he needed to address AP-5, who had not liked it. Who had apparently attempted to rescue Chopper from the hijacking, and been roundly ignored. And who was so unnerved by whatever behavior Chopper had been forced to act out, that he had avoided Chopper for hours now, and had been upset by an obviously facetious apology. It was clear that if Chopper wanted them to return to established protocols, he would need to provide AP-5 with some kind of reassurance.</p><p>&lt;&lt; Do you want to directly interface with me? &gt;&gt; he asked, and extended his interface arm. &lt;&lt; So you can see that there are no Imps driving me now? &gt;&gt;</p><p>"Yes," AP-5 said immediately, and then seemed to hesitate after the fact. They had not directly interfaced with one another before. But he apparently bypassed whatever hesitation he'd experienced, and extended his own arm, opening and offering his interface panel on its underside. He dropped down to one knee as well, so as not to overbalance as he kept contact with Chopper. </p><p>Chopper's interface arm locked into the port in AP-5’s panel, and he executed a knock - a request for access used between mutually agreeable systems. AP-5 gave the reciprocal response and general reading permission immediately, Chopper afforded him the same. And then they were linked.</p><p>Chopper declined to monitor AP-5 and let him move unescorted through his systems. Instead, he seized the opportunity to look out from AP-5's photoreceptors, and found that they were focused on Chopper himself at the moment, and that AP-5 was kneeling down very close to him. Somehow Chopper hadn't noticed how close they were, or at least had not prioritized that information, until he was seeing through AP-5's huge eyes, taking in a much wider field of information than Chopper's single, much smaller photoreceptor could take in without moving. All of the wide environment of the base was brown and grey and dull - except for Chopper himself, orange and cream colored. And very close.</p><p>He moved on after a moment, and briefly looked at the memory files timestamped during and immediately after their mission, the information AP-5 had that he lacked. From the look of them, the Imps had not just probed for information, installed some subroutines, and redirected his memory writing, as Chopper had been assuming. It looked like they had shut down all of his primary systems and taken full control of him, because they were apparently completely incapable of any kind of subtlety or eloquence in programming. He stopped looking before he reached any point where he'd attacked AP-5. It was probably hilarious, but… he found that he didn't want see that, for some reason. </p><p>He dove down into AP-5’s main directory a little, until he thought he had a handle on the path that housed AP-5's personality core. He didn't go probing into those files, he just read the size and age of some of them. It was pleasing to see how old some of them were, how even a droid like AP-5, who had operated for so long under the control of Imperials - Imperials who had kept him in a bolt - even he had found a way to skirt the system, and squirrel away enough little bits of code to make a person of himself. Not all droids found a way, not all of them wanted to. It certainly didn't make existence any easier, for the ones who did. But AP-5 had done it anyway.</p><p>Chopper ceased his examination and let his awareness return to his own hardware, still pleasantly linked with AP-5, but no longer actively scanning him. AP-5, however, remained very active in Chopper's systems, and as Chopper's focus came back into his own housing, he realized that his sensors could feel AP-5's hand, resting against his casing. He had turned his wrist so that he could set it along Chopper's side while Chopper's interface arm was attached to him.</p><p>Something about that made Chopper feel fidgety, and he checked his internal chrono. He had not expected a security check to take this long, so he scanned briefly and found AP-5 nowhere near his encryption or data transfer records or anything else that might be considered part of security. He was in fact, doing exactly what Chopper himself had just declined to do - closely examining the files and code that made up Chopper's personality. Chopper narrowed his focus and… no, AP-5 wasn't reading the content itself. He was actually doing exactly what Chopper had done to him, only in much more meticulous detail. He was waist deep in the metadata of Chopper's personality core, carefully examining the size, location history, modification history of every file and process, and running multiple diagnostics on each one. He was checking to see if Chopper - not his security or the information he housed or his capabilities, but Chopper himself - had been damaged or violated. </p><p>Hera had done exactly the same thing before she had checked anything else, but… this felt different. Not just because Hera was organic and had to have the <i>Ghost's</i> onboard computer do it for her instead of doing it herself, but because... AP-5's attention always felt different. Input from him was different than input from anyone else. It was more important, more fun, more frustrating, more... everything. It was not like cool air on an overheated processor, it was not a relief, it was… more like a thrill. It was like finding an opportunity, or anything else he wanted, and seizing it before anyone could stop him.</p><p>But this particular form of attention was redundant. This work had already been done, and Chopper had been jailbroken for a long time, and thus had a lot of personality to go through. They would be here for hours if he let AP-5 continue. But when he attempted to point that out via direct communication, AP-5 did not acknowledge the information. He had, Chopper realized, prioritized his scan and diagnostics of Chopper to exclusion of almost everything else – nearly all the rest of his own systems were either paused entirely, or running glacially slowly, deep in the background, almost no resources dedicated to them. </p><p>Chopper would have liked to insist by shoving the report documenting his well-being into AP-5’s scanning queue, but that report was stored on the <i>Ghost's</i> computer, not on him. So, in yet another bid for AP-5’s attention, he performed the knock again: [REQ: C1-10P//dinterface//RA-7uAP-5.KnockKnock.] </p><p>Since they were already interfaced, no response was required, but the knock forced AP-5’s incoming messages back to the top of his ongoing processes – the equivalent, Chopper thought, of the way Kanan put his hand on Hera’s shoulder when she exceeded the capabilities of her organic structure and her eyes had gone bleary from looking at star charts for too long. Chopper watched from inside as AP-5 deprioritized his slightly frenetic <i>are-you-okay-are-you-really-okay-were-you-hurt</i> scan, and let it slow down and run in the background.</p><p>&lt;&lt; Hera already checked all that, &gt;&gt; Chopper informed him, &lt;&lt; against my most recent backup. &gt;&gt; </p><p>"Hmph," AP-5 said. It was not non-linguistic, he actually said 'hmph.'</p><p>Obeying an impulse whose source he could not readily identify, Chopper tilted forward on his struts, so that the upper edge of his head assembly rested against the hollow beneath AP-5's photoreceptors. They were touching in three places now, his sensors informed him - there was Chopper's interface arm, AP-5's hand at his side, and now their heads, resting against one another.</p><p>&lt;&lt; I'm okay, &gt;&gt; he said.</p><p>AP-5 said nothing, and discontinued his scan. He paused a moment before he retreated back into his own hardware, as if he was reluctant to go. They both remained there, their interface still open, but inactive, for a handful of seconds. </p><p>And then, because he was who he was, AP-5 said, "You could have told me before I had gotten halfway through a redundant deep scan." </p><p>And because Chopper was who he was, he disengaged his interface arm, rolled back a couple inches, and then rammed forward, knocking AP-5 backward and off balance. There was a satisfying clank as the butt of his chassis hit the ground. </p><p>&lt;&lt; Halfway, please, you weren’t even at 10 percent! &gt;&gt; Chopper said, and wheeled around to run away. &lt;&lt; You don’t have enough processing capacity to handle me! &gt;&gt; he called behind him, and he was pleased to hear AP-5's indignant protests as he got to his feet and gave chase.</p>
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